Webtropic

By major_clanger

Spam is the single most annoying thing of the internet. Being so widespread, it is no exaggeration to say  that it can bring the web to a halt. When it comes to email, this statement is as close to truth as it can get.

Needless to say that there is no truly efficient antispam technique. And the reason I write this post, is just to declare provocatively, we need none.

Let me explain: Most of the spam fighting efforts are focusing on blocking the spammer’s way. We care about not letting them send mail messages or bait trackbacks to our blogposts, to deter them from faking twitter followers or friendfeed commenters.

As every crime story lover knows, what betrays the murderer is the motive. When it comes to spam, if we exclude pure malice, the motive is always one: to advertise.  In the end of the spam trail, always lies a legitimate or semi-legitimate ‘business’, that wants to attract customers. And there is where the collective antispamming effort has to focus.  Fighting down those who benefit from spam, fights down the financing of spam, and therefore spam itself.

 This kind of approach to fighting spam entails three levels of envolvement. The individual’s level, the community’s level and the authorities level.

• The individual’s responsibility is to bring to the attention of the community the existence of a spammer.
• The community’s responsibility is to expose the benefiting party and create a negative publicity for it that counterweights the whatever benefits of spamming.
• The authorities’ responsibility is, first to pass legislation that makes such an activity illegal, and then, aided by the community reproach,  to crack it down with whatever means.

At least, for the authorities of the countries of the world, this would be a welcome new activity next to their favorite passtimes of chasing bit torrents, cracking down free speach, and wiretapping conversations.

The past few days there has been a lot of buzz for  short urls.
First, it was the announcement that tinyurl will support custom aliases for shortened urls, to make them more readable and memorable (see here).

Yesterday, it was the launching of a new short url service, bit.ly, that brings lots of new features hailed by many users.
As I read through Marshall Kirkpatrick’s excellent write up of bit.ly in RWW, I felt that a kind of injustice was done on my friend Panos who has developed a similar service (urlborg) some time ago, but has not received similar attention yet.

Trying not to be partial though, I decided to make a comparison table, to, first, see for myself, if what I was feeling was justified, and then post it here, for others to see too.

As one can see from the table above, with the exception of the planned features of bit.ly, urlborg, stands pretty well against it.
As a matter of fact, urlborg is better in history tracking because, by emplyoing the Google account mechanism, it can keep track of all short urls created and/or clicked by a certain user.
Urlborg does not support thumbnails, but offsets the lack of this feature by other (mobile page preview, coupled map urls, media player) which, depending on the use, might be more important to a user.
Referral tracking is something missing from urlborg and it should be there. But the support of short domains prevails in significance to the support of custom urls, (or aliases in the case of tinyurl).

From the above, I think that my gut feeling is justified and that urlborg should receive some more attention. It deserves it.

For sometime now, it bothers me that I cannot track the comments of the people I care about and value, in other blogs. Neither can I have a unified picture about what have I commented and where.

This was the main reason I chose to switch to Disqus in my greek blog just a couple of months ago. Since a fair amount of blogs are utilizing disqus too,  the picture looks brighter but far from ideal.

To make things worse, there are competitive solutions to disqus, as well as solutions that do not attemot  to replace the comment system altogether but track the traditional blog comments in one place instead(co.comments comes first in mind).

The problem with all the above solutions is that they are not universal, nor can they be: they are competitive services that want to keep any competitive advantage they have  for themselves. Quite understandable. Especially since no cross commenting standard is to be found.

Yesterday, I came upon this  post of Shey Smith, where he calls for a unified commenting standard, having in mind primarily the cooperation of systems like Disqus, IntenseDebate and SezWho. But these systems are niche play compared to the standard commenting systems of Blogger, Typead and WordPress.

As I played with identi.ca, it came to me that the microblogging federation idea can also be applied to comments. To see how, let’s examine first what comprises a comment system first:

• A form of identification (that can support anonymous comments too).
• A comment text of arbitrary length, related to a post
• Replies from one commentor to another (in the case of disqus, replies become threads).
• A feed for comments
• Moderation of comments

If we were to replace the traditional blog comment systems with a microblogging platform like laconi.ca (where each blog would behaves like a separate laconi.ca server), what we would actually get is something that would accomodate for :

• A form of identification without anonymity
• A short text comment/post/update
• An informal reply mechanism
• An informal reply tracking mechanism
• A feed per user and friends, or a total feed.
• A way of blocking users (this is from twtter, not from laconi.ca).

To bring the two worlds closer, we would have to expand the text from 140 chars to any length, bind updates to posts by making every new post create a new update with the trackback  url in it.

Around each blog there is a community of regular, not so regurar and casual users. Most likely each one of them reads or owns other blogs too. If someone owns a blog, his/her blog becomes her place where the user identity is registered/created. For users with no blogs, this can be any other blog of their choice, that will server from then on as their commenting system provider. Each blog owner could choose to follow whomever he likes and therefore track his comments in the blog comment systems federation. Likewise for a user without blog. If a comment is originated from someone that the blog owner does not follow, it will show up in the replies, as replies from users we don’t know can show up in our twitter replies tab.

The ultimate merit of such an implementation is that it converts each blog into a social network too.

What do you say?

Note: As I was about to finish the writing of this post, through a tweet, I was informed of an alternative suggestion too.

Related:

http://www.winextra.com/2008/07/06/apis-the-new-web-20-protocols/

Plurk, the recently launched microblogging service, with the uncommon timeline interface, and the features considered by many as childish (: funny emoticons, karma, and karma related ‘creatures’) is not exactly the favorite of A-list bloggers. Despite  the considerable amount of people that joined it, plurk remains in the shadow of the more ‘serious’ twitter and friendfeed. As if it had to be considered an alternative to them! Whatever utility one can get from such services is up to the community that will form around it.

Having said this, I must recognise that the ease of making  threaded discussions, the notifications for new updates, which, unlike twitter, is inherent in plurk, and the toys (:emoticons, etc) available, predispose people to behave differently. So most, actually, use it for chatting. And this is not bad at all, provided one knows what to expect.

It would take just a couple of changes though, to make it a serious twitter competitor: strip all the funny stuff and replace the timeline interface with the one used in the mobile version. Ok, maybe SMS too, although I do not consider it a serious possibility for plurk. Since one thread ca easily reach 100 responses, it would be almost a martyrdom to get so many updates through SMS.

Plurk has not published any API so far, but there is an unofficial one. The lack of an API and the inclusion of auto refresh in the web application, has not motivated developers to create add-ons, twitter style. Adobe Air apps, search engines, statistics, special feeds or hash tags etc. are simply not there.

Not entirely though. Hellotxt and ping.fm offer posting possibilities and one can easily get the plurk feed in friendfeed in the form of a blog feed. There is also twistermc for firefox and maybe some more.

Recently I came across a site that is dedicated to plurk statistics: Plurkmania (A twitter friend introduced me to it. Many thanks!).

Since there is very little information on the site (although, in a previous visit, I am almost sure that  I saw that a 24 year old was the site creator) I can only assume that it is using the unofficial API to get the stats out.

Yet, the stats collected are interesting, not for plurk itself only, but for comparisons also.

Plurkmania allows ordering plurk users by:

• Karma
• Location
• Friends
• Fans
• Friends & Fans
• Plurks
• Responses
• Plurks & Responses
• # Recruited

There are also some extra stats for

• Gender
• Relationship
• Creature (!)
• Theme

but with numbers that do  add up to the plurk population, not even close. This discrepancy may be attibuted to users not filling information as far Gender and  Relationship are concerned  but cannot be explained for Creature and Theme which should be applicable to all.

Of course, one, by entering his plurk name, can get personal statistics too .

Mine follow.

(At the time of writing, I discovered through this that I am the top plurk recruiter for Greece -although the number is really small- and that I rank 25th for the whole world).

In a sense, like plurk, plurkmania is amusing. Check the rank by fans, for instance. Leo Laporte is nr 1, but his karma is a mediocre 31.64. Likewise for Scoble (#2 and 24.74 respectively). Darren Rowse does pretty well on both though (#10, 74.47).

This is explainable. A-list bloggers can easily attract followers in any new service, but apparently they don’t care for posting in plurk.

Plurkmania can be a success. Whenever and wherever there is a possibility for people to rank high, they come and look. Same for plurk rankings, provided that plurk will be around for long.

:)

Update: Ok, I found the creator. And he gives some important info too. In two days, we should be expecting the official launch.

Update 2: Plurkmania  is on Mashable. If it was this post that helped plurkmania to make it to mashable, then I am certainly glad!

Related:

http://www.mpdailyfix.com/2008/07/while_alisters_hype_friendfeed.html

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/06/06/playing-with-plurk/

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/02/plurk-twitter-clone-or-heir-to-twitters-throne/

http://thenextweb.org/2008/06/02/are-you-already-plurking/

Image via Wikipedia

In the past two days a wind of optimism blows over the tech blogosphere: identi.ca, the  microblogging service of Evan Prodromou, made  it’s debut,  throwing the dice for two very important issues: Scalability  and innovation.

Scalabitity has been tantalizing twitter to the point of causing a mass user exodus.

Twitter competitors (Pownce, Jaiku, Plurk etc) have not brought really important new features to microblogging. It is also  debateable whether the ones they brought have the power to attract some of the fleeing twitter users in the long run.

In contrast, identi.ca, or rather, the underlying laconi.ca, the open source platform  identi.ca is built upon, has brought in the scence two things long desired and awaited: federation and open source.

Federation in microblogging means microblogging services ‘talking’ to each other, i.e. users of one service befriending or following users of another and vice versa. A federated microblogging ecosystem is the answer to the scalability issue.

Open source means innovation, means that now there is a platform the thousands of briliant developers around the world can peep into, in their free time, and contribute tons of new code and new ideas.

In the microblogging world to come, there will be no single big provider that dominates the game, but rather small or medium ones, spread all over the globe.

Yet, however appealing this vision might look, one has to think the mundane realities: how are these service provides going to make a living? In other words, what business model is appropriate for them?

Twitter has no business model. And so do many other web 2.0 ventures. As an answer to this, we hear pretty often that it does not need any. Once a sizable community is formed around twitter, the business model (or, rather, the advertsers) will follow.

The same line of thought cannot be applied to federated microblogging though. With practically not existent barriers of entry, new microblogging services can sprout like mushrooms everywhere, each attracting a small number of users and, therefore, never attaining the magnitute twitter aims for.

What are the options then? I would say only three, none looking  a really viable solution:

• Charge for premium  services
• Revenue sharing for SMS originated updates
• Whatever ad revenue stream can be generated (i.e. adwords)

The first option should rather  not be  accounted for: extra storage or page customization or high profile accounts (: the wordpress.com model) are not a serious bait for users to spend their bucks.

Revenue from SMS updates,shared with the telcos, can be a serious source of income. Yet, the proliferation of smart phones and the affordability of data plans, will eclipse this kind of revenue in the near future.

Text and banner ads are gradually losing power. Yet, text adds for a text service sounds like the the appropriate ad type.

Banners are largely ignored, especially by  a crowd so diverse as  microblogging users, which cannot be targeted easily. Text analysis tools, that can extract meaninful information (like one’s preferences, buying patterns, spending power, age etc), need to be developed.  Such tools  would also need to perform their analysis throughout various microblogging services, and target users throughout  the microblogging ‘federation’.

How much ad revenue can make a microblogging service break even? Not too much, given the low setup and zero development costs. Even so, will it be  generated? It better be or the ‘federation’  will go bankrupt.

Related:

http://www.scripting.com/stories/2008/07/03/federatingIdentica.html

http://decafbad.com/blog/2008/07/03/getting-laconica-up-and-running

http://www.sarahintampa.com/sarah/2008/07/02/identica-early-adopter-tips.html

http://shegeeks.net/why-id-leave-twitter-qik-video-response/

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/indentica_federated_twitter.php

This has been bugging me for sometime now: how to display the technoratiy authority in a wordpress.com blog?

The chicklet provided by Technorati is, of course, working with Javascript, which means is useless for wordpress.com blogs.

Technorati has a rich api, but it requires some programming to use it. The solution cannot be programmatic, as we have no access to the .com blog code, and cannot employ external servers, because it is not a wordpress.com solution then.

After experimenting a lot with XSLT and producing an XSL document capable of giving the proper authority number for a blog, I dumped this approach, because, again, there is no way of incorporating the XSL solution in a wordpress.com blog.

I turned them to Yahoo pipes having in mind to transform the authority number into a feed and display it through a wordpress.com feed widget.

Since I am a newbie in Yahoo Pipes, I looked around for similar solutions and found the many pipes provided by engtech.

Then I was able to construct the one I wanted!

Ingredients:
a. You need to sign up in Technorati and get an API key.
b. You need to open a yahoo account (if you don’t have one already) and register for yahoo pipes.
c. Create a new pipe following the diagram below. The two points that you need to differentiate yourselves, are the API key (enter the one provided to you by Technorati), and your blog url.

d. Run the pipe and get the RSS feed url.
e. Enter the feed url in a wordpress rss widget, add the title of your liking and there you are!
You can check mine at the bottom of the sidebar. Of course, it need some formating to look like the real chicklet, but I will leave that for a future post.

My home country is renown for two things: its antiquity and its islands (a favorite destination of millions of tourists in the summer).
Yesterday, I think, we started to change this picture, a bit. We did not eliminate the sea element, but we scrapped the views that Greece is an ancient country with no startups.

OpenCoffee Greece and Techcrunch UK organized an event by the sea, in a very summer-like and relaxed place (as you can testify by the short video below). A bunch of Greek startups had the opportunity to present themselves and become a little bit more known to a larger puplic.
From my small participation in the preparations, I happen to know that it was arranged and organized in record time: only a month from decision to the actual event.

An enthusiastic crowd of around 200-250 people managed to gather at Bocca Beach, and follow patiently the presentations to the end, despite the long delay caused by the failure of some sound equipment, the nervousness of the presenters and the constant beer distractions.

I managed to attend too, despite (or against) my raging flu, and I do not regret it.

Mike Butcher, of Techcrunch UK, kicked off the event, presenting the general trends regarding VCs, startups and investments in Europe. The whole thing can be summed up in one sentence: the future of the European startups is mobile, something that I strongly believe also.

I will not go through the startup presentations, one by one. I will blog about them in the near future.
For those interested, here is a quick list of the startups.

Blymee (more)
Photo Frame Show (more)
Slideflickr (more)
Sojourner (more)
Transifex (more)
Askmarkets (more)
Wadja (more)
Qualia (more)
Product Madness (more)

The greek budding startup ecosystem was one of the reasons I decided to blog in English. Technology, internet and startups are, by definition, global things and English in the lingua franca of nowdays.
So, stay tuned! More startups to come. :)